PART II
Fate of the Tocharians
For many centuries, the mountainous trade routes called the “Silk Road” commercially linked Persia and the Greco-Roman world with China and India. This vital trade route was dominated by Indo-Europeans who were mostly Aryans. However, its last segment before entering China was held by the easternmost branch of Indo-Europeans, called “Tocharians.”
The Tocharians seem to have moved away from their brethren on the south Russian steppes sometime before 3500 BCE, and they migrated eastward into Central Asia (Baldi 1983, 144; Mallory & Mair 2000, 121–122, 29–294, & 270). Tocharians probably formed the Afanasevo culture (3500–2500 BCE) in eastern Central Asia. But after its demise, Aryans founded western Central Asia’s Andronovo culture, which gradually expanded eastward to absorb the former Afanasevo territory (Mallory & Mair 2000, 293–295; “Tarim,” 4). By this time, most Tocharians had migrated south into present Afghanistan and northwestern China (Mallory & Mair 2000, 314–318).
The Eastern Tocharians of Northwest China
In the Tarim and Turpan Basins (presently in northwest China), Tocharians populated the central and harshest terrain of the Silk Road (Ibid, 30). Ancient murals, mummies preserved in the desert, and written records reveal that these people were blonde and brown-haired, green and blue-eyed Indo-Europeans, and that they had some contact with Sassanian Iran (Mallory & Mair 2000, 93, 156–163, 188–189, 236–237, 280; “Tarim,” 1–3). Their clothing included tartan plaids much like those of the West European Celts. Both sexes wore trousers, and they had pointed hats similar to those found among some ancient and medieval European cultures and later stereotyped as “witch” hats (Mallory & Mair 2000, 32, 41, 196–220; “Tarim,” 2; “Tocharians,” 3).
Tocharians were the only people in the Tarim and Turpan basins until about 1000 BCE, when some northeast Asian Mongoloids arrived in small numbers (Mallory & Mair 2000, 242; “Tarim”, 3–4). At that time, there began only some very rare matings between Tocharian men and Mongoloid women (Mallory & Mair 2000, 250–251; “Tarim,” 2–3). Therefore, during a period of about 1,800 years before the Common Era, the eastern Tocharians were isolated as pagans and then to some extent as followers of the Prophet Zarathustra. And during that nearly two millennia, they retained their separate linguistic, cultural, and racial identity.
The Kushans (Western Tocharians)
In about 176–163 BCE, a group of nomadic Tocharians—whom the Chinese called Yuezhi—was defeated by a Mongoloid people called Xiongnu (pronounced ‘shyoong noo’). The fiercely warlike Xiongnu were ancestors of the Huns (Mallory & Mair 2000, 55, 87). Faced with this alien onslaught, the Yuezhi fled westward, conquered Bactria in northwest Afghanistan, and became known in the West as “Kushans” (Ibid, 94–96). The Kushans established a multi-ethnic empire extending from south of the Aral Sea to northern India’s Ganges River (Ibid, 96). For a few generations, the Kushans were isolated from their eastern Tocharian brethren and evolved a different version of their common language (Lane 2007, 232; “Tarim,” 5; Durant 1954, I, 450). However, gradually most Kushans were converted to Buddhism. Subsequently, at the beginning of the Common Era, Kushan Buddhist monks spread that religion to the eastern Tocharians, and they began spreading it into China (Mallory & Mair 2000, 97, 171–173, 80). Then, near the year 450, the Irano-Aryan Hephthalites came south from the Central Asian steppe and took over the Kushan empire. They remained in control until the Turks ended their rule in 563 CE (Ibid, 98).
Extinction
During the first century CE, most eastern Tocharians became Buddhists. In addition, by the late third century CE, many were converted to Manichaeism, and even the Tocharian Buddhists attained some Manichaean beliefs. Furthermore, starting in 277 CE, the Persian King Bahram I exiled many Manichaeans from his empire to the Tocharian domain (Rezakhani 2007, Ch. 5: “Sassanians,” 1). As a result of these influences, the long-surviving Tocharians lost a spiritual link to their ancestors by adopting two world-negating religions. And both of these universalist doctrines—Buddhism and Manichaeism—are indifferent to the survival of one’s own Asha-given kind.
During the eighth century, the Uyghur Turks conquered the Central Asian Aryans and ruled an empire extending from the Caspian Sea to Manchuria (“Uyghur,” 1). In 762, the Uyghurs adopted Manichaeism as their official religion. However, in 840 they were displaced by the Kirquiz Turks and fled southward. By 850 they had taken the Tarim Basin, and there they were converted to Buddhism (Mallory & Mair 2000, 99–101). Then in the tenth century, both the Uyghurs and their Tocharian subjects began converting to Islam (“Uyghur,” 1).
Having already become deracinated, the Tocharians adopted their alien masters’ language, culture, and the Moslem religion. They also extensively mated with the Uyghurs. The result was that by the tenth century, the eastern Tocharians had rendered themselves extinct (Mallory & Mair 2000, 250–251, 273).
Meanwhile, the Aryan tribes that had resided in and dominated Central Asia for nearly three thousand years, suffered a similar fate. During the sixth century CE, various Turkic hordes entered from the east and gradually displaced or conquered these Aryans. And any who did not flee or who were not killed, were culturally and genetically absorbed into the Moslem Turkic masses.
References
Baldi, Phillip. 1983. An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Mallory, J. P. and Victor H. Mair. 2000. The Tarim Mummies. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd.
Rezakhani, Khodadad. 2007. The History of Iran. Iranologue.com/KhodadadRezakhani.
“Tarim Mummies.” n.d. Wikipedia. Retrieved October 26, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org.
“Tocharians.” n.d. Information Search.com. Retrieved October 26, 2006 from http://c10-ss-1-1b.cnet.com/references/Tocharians.
“Uyghur.” n.d. Cenipedia. Retrieved on March 4, 2011 from http://www.centipedia.com/articles/Ugghur.
